His book of short stories My Life As a Mole won the 1989 Small Press Lambda Literary Award.

[8][9] In addition to his own work, he was friends with and collaborated with many prominent gay artists working in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s including William "Bill" Rice,[10][11] David Wojnarowicz,[12] Peter Hujar and Gary Indiana.

[13] The feature film Acid Snow (1998) directed by Joel Itman is based on Mitchell's novel of the same name.

[1][15][16] At that time, he co-edited the book "Willard Waller on The Family, Education and War" with William J. Goode and Frank Furstenberg published in 1970.

[2][16] He was born in Muncie, Indiana, in 1939 and died on December 26, 2012, in Ithaca, New York, after a battle with pancreatic cancer.